On the Need to Become Aware of ‘the Social Dimension of the Faith,’ by Cardinal Parolin

“The believer who lives in union with Christ…is invited to become aware of the social dimension of the faith,” said the Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin.

The Cardinal expressed this in his homily for the closing Mass of the 7th Festival of the Social Doctrine of the Church on the theme”Fidelity and Change,” on Sunday, November 26, 2017, at Verona, Italy, reported Vatican Radio in Italian. The three-day event opened on November 23 with a video-message of Pope Francis.

“Believers, be it individually or as associates must be educated to receive and celebrate the life of Christ, witnessing it in an increasingly globalized world…As the Holy Father affirmed again, the faith must not only be proclaimed but lived concretely, acknowledging in brothers the permanent prolongation of the Incarnation for each one of us,” stressed Cardinal Parolin.

The believer “can’t ignore the profound reasons of his missionary engagement in all earthly realities,” he continued. “He is invited to live love to 360 degrees, namely, a full love of truth (Caritas in Veritate), in all domains, beginning with inter-personal relations up to financial and economic activity, in the civil and political society, in the human family, in the media, and in the culture,” he added.

The Cardinal Secretary of States invited to “witness the love of Christ by the defense of unborn life and of life that is extinguished, the social inclusion of the poor and the establishment of a healthy global economy.”

“”One must witness, by aiding people that are called to work in the social and in the political realms…without forgetting that all must be done at the service of the common good, at the service of each man, of the whole man and of all men, as Blessed Paul VI reminded us 50 years ago in Populorum Progressio, whose timeliness has not diminished in these difficult times.” And this is so because God in Christ does not only redeem the individual person but also social relations,” he noted.

The Cardinal also stressed that “in a society dominated by a radical neo-individualism and by a prevailing indifference in regard to the other,” the Social Doctrine of the Church contributes a clarification: “From the scenario of the end of time, where Christ, Lord of the universe, appears conqueror of all the powers of evil and of death, comes the teaching according to which to work for a civilization of love is not vain,” he concluded.